On This Day in HISTORY

1355 – Thomas of Woodstock born, first Duke of Gloucester, leader of the Lords Appellant whose opposition successfully weakens the power of King Richard II; but Richard manages to dispose of the Lords Appellant in 1397, and Thomas is murdered while awaiting trial for treason, which adds even more to Richard’s unpopularity

Left, the murder of Thomas – Right, portrait of Thomas of Woodstock

1558 – The French take Calais, the last English possession in France

1610 – Galileo Galilei makes his first observation of the four Galilean moons: Ganymede, Callisto, Io and Europa, although not able to distinguish the last two until the following day

1618 – Francis Bacon becomes Lord Chancellor of England

1634 – Adam Krieger born, German organist and composer

1782 – Bank of North America opens, first American commercial bank

1785 – Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries travel in a gas balloon from Dover, England, to Calais in France, the first air-crossing of the English Channel

1797 – The modern Italian flag is first used

1831 – Heinrich von Stephan born, German Empire general post director who founded the Universal Postal Union, one of the most important but little-known organizations in the world, which oversees international postal regulations that keep mail traveling smoothly between nations

1876 – William Hurlstone born, English pianist and composer

1896 – The Fannie Farmer Cookbook is published

1899 – Francis Poulenc born, French pianist and composer

1904 – The distress signal “CQD” is announced by the Marconi International Marine Communication Company; Land telegraphs traditionally used “CQ” for sécu from the French word sécurité – Marconi added the “D” for “distress.” Replaced two years later by “SOS”

1906 – Henry “Red” Allen born, American Jazz trumpet player-vocalist

1911 – Thelma “Butterfly” McQueen born, African American actress, best remembered for her first film role, Scarlett O’Hara’s maid Prissy, in Gone With the Wind; she was prevented from appearing at the world premiere of the movie because it was held at a whites-only movie house in Atlanta GA; honored by the Freedom From Religion Foundation with its Freethought Heroine Award in 1989 for her public statements on why she was an atheist

1912 – Charles Addams born, American cartoonist, The Addams Family

1919 – Montenegrin guerrilla fighters rebel against the planned annexation of Montenegro by Serbia, but the uprising fails

1920 – The New York State Assembly suspends five duly elected Socialist assemblymen pending a hearing before a tribunal, by a vote of 140 to 6, with one Democrat supporting the Socialists. Civil libertarians, concerned citizens and the press protest the suspension of the Socialists, arguing that a majority party expelling elected members of minority parties from their councils sets a dangerous precedent in a democracy. The Socialists are expelled April 1, but all five are re-elected in a special election intended to replace them. But legislation written to exclude the Socialist Party from recognition as a political party, and altering the legislature’s oath-taking procedures so elected members could be excluded before being sworn is vetoed by Governor Al Smith

1922 – Dáil Éireann ratifies the Anglo-Irish Treaty by a 64–57 vote; it establishes an Irish Free State within a year as a self-governing dominion

1922 – Jean-Pierre Rampal born, French flute player

1924 – George Gershwin completes “Rhapsody in Blue”

1925 – Gerald Durrell born in India, English conservationist, founder of Durrell Wildlife Park; author of My Family and Other Animals, and other biographical works, scientific guides, children’s books, and short stories

1927 – The first transatlantic telephone service is established from New York, New York to London

1927 – The Harlem Globetrotters * founded as the Savoy Big Five by Abe Saperstein – won the World Professional Basketball Tournament in 1940

1929 – Buck Rogers makes his debut in the comic strip

1935 – Benito Mussolini and French Foreign minister Pierre Laval sign the Franco-Italian Agreement, but the French give only a small amount of land in eastern Africa and a desert area in the French Sahara, which increases Italian resentment about the division of German territory by France and England after WWI

1941 – Iona Brown born, British violinist and conductor with Academy of St. Martin in the Fields; as conductor, associated with Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and City of Birmingham Symphony

1949 – (Martha) Marshall Chapman born, American singer-songwriter

1953 – U.S. President Truman announces hydrogen bomb development

1954 – The first public demonstration of a machine translation system developed jointly by Georgetown University and IBM, is held in the IBM New York head office

1955 – Contralto Marian Anderson is the first person of color to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in Giuseppe Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera

1958 – Ant Farms go on sale; Milton Levine got the idea at a July 4th family picnic

1959 – Angela Evans Smith born, Baroness Smith of Basildon since 2010; British Labour Co-operative politician, Member of Parliament for Basildon (1997-2010); Leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords since May 2015

2015 – The first Bobblehead Day * celebrated at the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame

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About wordcloud9

Nona Blyth Cloud has lived and worked in the Los Angeles area for the past 45 years, spending much of that time commuting on the 405 Freeway. After Hollywood failed to appreciate her genius for acting and directing, she began a second career managing non-profits, from which she has retired.
Nona has now resumed writing whatever comes into her head, instead of reports and pleas for funding. She lives in a small house overrun by books with her wonderful husband and a bewildered Border Collie.

9 Responses to ON THIS DAY: January 7, 2018

One of my favorite (true) stories:
The linguists working on the initial translation machines were testing the English-Russian and Russian-English machine by inputting English proverbs and sayings, and translating them into Russian, then putting that Russian translation back into the machine in the other direction to see what the results said in English. They put in a saying and retrieved (after it went from English to Russian and back again): INVISIBLE IDIOT.
The original English saying? “Out of sight, out of mind.”

I’m not a particular basketball fan either, but I saw them when I was a kid with the Meadowlark Lemon/Curly Neal lineup. I remember feeling really sorry for the Washington Generals having to play those guys all the time.

On this date in 1998, our county was hit by an epic flash flood. The National Weather Service issued a flash flood watch at 3:31 p.m. It began to rain, and rained hard on into the night. The flooding continued on into the next day, January 8.

The flood of 1998 arrived with little warning. There had been a blizzard, which dumped a huge amount of snow and ice on the area, especially Roan Mountain, which sits on the Tennessee-North Carolina border. The 6,285′ mountain has a 150 square mile footprint, so when snow is several feet deep on the mountain, that is a LOT of stored water. As the cold wave moved on it was followed by unusually warm temperatures. Warming temperatures and warm rain melted the snow and ice from the blizzard far faster than normal snow melt. The melted snow, coupled with steady rain, caused every stream and creek in the area to flood. Waters reached as high as five or six feet in some areas.

Water racing down mountain streams hurled boulders the size of automobiles down the mountain creek channels. Seven people died. One of them was a first responder, killed trying to effect a rescue.

A van with a family of four was found in the Doe River about a half mile from my house the next morning. They had tried to cross a low bridge as fast-moving water had begun to cross the bridge.

If they had made a U-turn and gone the other way to higher ground, the parents and their two children would not have perished. Despite repeated warnings on the news, people do not seem to realize six inches of fast-moving water can sweep a car or truck off the road, to float downstream. Their van was found four or five miles downstream from where they were swept away.

The first responder died when his rescue boat capsized. In the mountains, water can rise with incredible speed, but also subsides almost as quickly, due to steep terrain.